In 2005, Liso, a teacher in South Africa and mother of teenage twins, hears about an opening for a “missionary” for a Houston church. Any South African will jump at the chance to go to America, she claims, even if it’s “to wash someone’s pig.” Liso knew she wouldn’t be paid much, but she hoped that it would lead to better paying jobs that would help her support her family back home. When the “teaching” job she had been promised was taken away, and she was given menial labor day after day, and not fed properly, she began to realize she’d been had. Now here she was, with an expired visa, for all intents and purposes a slave in America.

Too often we see immigration as an “issue,” without knowing anything about immigrants themselves and their own stories about their experiences here.  Liso is just one example of the stories that Peter Orner has collected in Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives. At the First Person Festival, stories from the book will be presented in a dramatic reading.

No doubt you will be affected by these stories, many of which are harrowing. But these people can’t just be seen as victims. Says Orner in a Salon interview, “It’s a vulnerable population, but they’re not 100 percent victims at the hands of our society. It’s more complicated than that. It’s a relationship that’s navigated by them and by us, to sometimes very bad and violent effect.”   Orner names some of the myths about immigrants that can hold sway, like how they want to steal jobs and take our money.  He asserts, “I didn’t personally find any success stories.”

You are invited to learn more at a panel discussion afterward led by Pete Orner and other immigration experts.

Tickets for this event may be purchased at Brown Paper Tickets.

Underground America
Wednesday, November 12th
Time: 8:30-10:30PM
Location: Painted Bride

Cost: $15